56 Friday, August 11, 1919

THE DETRUIT JEWISH NEWS

Jewish Legion Combat Unit Helped Britain Liberate Palestine

From Israel Digest
teers, men aged 18-45, im-
The Jewish troops pushed bued with the idea of help-
north up the Jordan Valley ing free Palestine, and
toward Damascus. It was eventually establishing a
autumn 1918, and the Jewish state. But establish-
troops were members of the ing the legion was not easy.
first Jewish combat unit
It took the prodding of
since the days of Bar Vladimir (Zeev)
Kochba, 1,900 years earlier. Jabotinsky, and the support
They were part of the of Chaim Weizmann and
British Army, which was Lord Rothschild for the
conducting its final offen- batallion to be formed in
sive against the Turks, England.
liberating Palestine from
This effort was made
Ottoman rule, according to easier by the Balfour
an article by Abe Kramer. Declaration on Nov. 2,
They called us the 38th 1917. A simultaneous
and 39th Battalions of the push to form such a unit
Royal Fusiliers," said was led in the United
William Braiterman, one of States by David Ben-
the Americans who served Gurion and Yitzhak
in the unit. On Yom Kip- Ben-Zvi (later to be Is-
pur 1918, we took part in rael's second president).
the capture of the Urn Esh-
It also had the support of
Shert ford across the Jor- the Poale Zion Party, the
dan, and this broke the back Zionist Organization of
of the Turks."
America, and Justice Louis
The Jewish Legion was Brandeis. Setting personal
staffed with young volun- examples, Ben-Gurion and

,

Ben-Zvi, exiled from Pales-
tine by the . Turks, enlisted
and spurred hundreds of
others to do so. The 39th
Battalion came into being.
In Palestine itself, Jewish
leaders were able to or-
ganize 1,000 volunteers into
the 40th Batallion. In all,
some 10,000 volunteers
served in the Legion, com-
ing from a wide range of
countries, including Pales-
tine.
At the end of the cam-
paign, the Palestinian units
were officially renamed the
First Judean Regiment, and
the menora became their
official emblem. Highly
praised by the British, the
unit included veterans of
the famed Zion Mule Corps,
which was in fact the first
Jewish unit, formed in
1915. Disbanded in 1916,
some 60 members later be-
came the nucleus of the 38th
Batallion.

Soldiers of the Jewish Legion are shown on the beach at Rafiah in 1918. The
officer, center front, is Vladimir Jabotinsky.

But not all Legion vete-
rans left Palestine to par-
ticipate in the war. Four
hundred stayed behind
to work the land and in
1932, 60 of them, from the
U.S., Canada and Argen-
tina founded the Avi-

Chail settlement (Hebrew
for my father, the soldier)
on a stretch of coastal
sand dunes less than
three kilometers north of
Natanya.
In 1959, with the support
of Legionnaires, their

families, and contributions
from friends, construction of
a Jewish Legion Museum
began. In 1961, the fruits of
their labor, Beit Hagdudim,
was dedicated as a tes-
timony to the Jewish
Legion.

The Jordan River: Through an Ancient Land of Tranquility

By SIMON CAMPBELL

Israel Tourist Office

JERUSALEM — The
River Jordan goes all the
way back to the early chap-
ters of Genesis, as every
Bible reader knows. Yet
very few people, even in Is-
rael, can actually identify
the source of the Jordan.
Less than an hour's drive
from the mystical resort city

of Safed, or from the spa re-
sort of Tiberias, the north-
ern Galilee is an area of lush
farmland, orchards, rivers
and brooks. And here, at
Kibutz Sdeh Nehemiah, is
where it actually begins.
Inside the kibutz, two
tiny rivers, the Dan and the
Hatzbani, join to become the
Jordan River, the river that
"God told Moses he shall not

This aerial photograph of the Jordan River was
photographed in July 1918 by the Australian Flying
Corps for the Allied forces. The photo is now part of
an Australian collection on loan to Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.

cross." The overriding im-
pression of a visit to the spot
is one of tranquility.
One experiences a feeling
of awe standing at the be-
ginning of the world's best-
known river — one with a
history as wide as the
Pacific Ocean and as long as
the Mississippi, Congo, and
Amazon Rivers combined,
but with only a creek-sized
flow of water. However, its
pacific aspect at Sdeh
Nehemiah,is deceptive.
Uri Goren, the kibutz
secretary and one of its
founders in 1940, vividly
recalls the "night of the
flood" (January, 1963). At
that time, the river, dur-
ing a heavy rain season,
overflowed with a ven-
geance. The water rose
at an amazing speed, and
in a short time the whole
southern part of our
kibutz was 20 inches deep
in muddy water," Uri re-
calls.
To solve periodic flooding,
it was decided to
"straighten out" the river.
The plans included cutting
away a small promontory.
But the engineers heeded
the kibutz members' plea
not to deprive them of their
little "peninsula" and com-
promised by cutting a bed
through it, leaving Sdeh
Nehemiah with a little is-
land, perhaps the only one
in the Jordan.
Today the island is lush
With vegetation and trees,
and serves the kibutz as a
"summer retreat," ap-
proachable via a small pon-
toon bridge. The little isle
contains the kibutz swim-
ming pool, a tennis court
and a beautiful picnic site.
When the river-bed was

being straightened, the
work-crew came upon the
foundations of an old bridge
from the Mameluke period
(13th Century) some stones
of which are still visible.
Farther north lies
Kibutz Dan. The ancient
city of Dan was men-
tioned in the Bible as the
northernmost boundary
of the Kingdom of Israel,
extending "from Dan to
Beersheba." The kibutz
has a natural history
museum and a nature re-
serve in which deer,
salamander and other
woodland creatures may
be spotted.
"Tel" Dan is an archeolog-
ical mound, whose excava-
tions have uncovered evi-
dence of countless civiliza-
tions, including those of the
ancient C-anaanites, the

Phoenicians and another
even earlier, dating from
the 18th Century B.C.E.
The river Dan flows south

to the national park of Hor-
shat Tal, where some of its
water supplies the park's
beautiful swimming pool.

The Jordan River is shown where it enters the Sea
of Galilee at the northern end of the lake. The river
leaves the lake at the southern end and flows south
through the Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea.

Rebuilding Jerusalem's Old City
Tough Task Has Its Rewards

From Israel Digest

JERUSALEM — Trite as
it may sound, every city is
built upon its infrastruc-
ture. Depending upon the
durability and soundness of
the sewage system and
basic structural founda-
tions, a city either stands or
falls, according to an article
by Laurie Drossin.
After the Six-Day War,
Jerusalem city engineers
discovered that much of the
Old City of Jerusalem was
literally caving in. Its an-
cient sewage system built in
Ottoman times — and never
repaired or extended under
50 years of British and Jor-
danian rule — was filled to
the brim and overflowing,
thus, collapsing the founda-
tions of many buildings. Be-
cause nearly all the build-
ings in the city's quarters
are contiguous, a chain
reaction was beginning.
The sinking of one building
was causing its adjacent
neighbors to sink.
Immediate repairs were
carried out in 1967-68 to

counter structural deter-
ioration and temporarily
improve the worst drainage
bottlenecks. But city plan-
ners soon realized that a
comprehensive overhaul of
the Old City's entire sewage-
network was imperative.
Together, with the Is-
raeli Government, the
Jerusalem Municipality
agreed to finance this
multi-faceted project
which also was to include
introducing running
water into the Old City.
This luxury was prev-
iously unknown by Old
City residents. All elec-
tricity and telephone
lines were to be relaid
underground in order to
preserve authentically
the historic skyline.
Rebuilding a sewage sys-
tem and relaying electricity
and telephone lines natur-
ally caused most of the
streets to be torn up at one
time or another. Although
in the long-run such repairs
benefit merchants, in the
short-run their businesses

suffer from limited accessi-
bility. Consequently, the
Jerusalem Municipality
compensated every mer-
chant during the actual
time that the street in front
of hig shop was torn up.

After all the underground
repairs were completed,
every street was paved in
Jerusalem stone — qu=a^ a
change for - most st
which had previously
dirt paths, muddy in the
winter rains.

One of the most exciting
results of all this repair
work was the discovery of
the Fourth-Fifth Century
Kadum Rd. in the Christian
Quarter. Many of its origi-
nal stones have been used to
repave the road, thus, also
contributing the authentic-
ity of the modern Old City.
For nearly 30,000 inhabi-
tants of the Old City of
Jerusalem, life within its
walls becomes more aesthe-
tic and modern every day —
despite temporary incon-
veniences.

